What I've discovered now is that, as an American, it is impossible to prove people's stereotypes wrong. As it turns out, the bigoted image of the American is perpetuated by the bigoted reality of the European. Before I go too far down this path, I must explain that I've made friends with Europeans, but they all believe me to be an exception, one out of many in a country of ignorant, wheezing, trigger-happy Americans.
Many times I have met people and found it impossible to have an interaction that wasn't dominated by the person's disgust at my American-ness. I met one Lithuanian girl at a student bar. I asked her where she was from and she said, "Lithuania, but you probably couldn't find it on a map." In certain circumstances, this sass could be interpreted as a cute flirt from a sexually liberated girl begging to fuck. However, her cold frown told another story, and I responded like any dumb American should. "Probably not."
It was the truth, insofar as finding something on a map means searching on a blank map for a small country in the Balkans. Obviously, given enough time and a well-labeled political map printed after World War II, I could easily find it. But to expect the country to be ingrained in my geographical memory forever, that's just too much. That would be like asking a European to find Guatemala on a map, or Mali, a country some Europeans I've met never even heard of.
You see, as much as people criticize the US for acting like world police (which I too oppose, for the record), they act like we should be masters of the universe and know all about every single country and each one of their fascinating, insignificant, histories.
In a brunch organized for my sociolinguistics class, I was met with similar criticism after making a benign remark about... applesauce. My teacher, a tall bearded septuagenarian, announced that he was going to bring out applesauce he had made from a tree that lived not twenty feet from where we sat. Half-joking, I said, "You can do that?!" I looked at applesauce the same way one looks at ketchup, something common and good, but never made in the kitchen.
An extremely tall and equally nerdy Dane who worked in the IT division of the university laughed at my remark as a fat lesbian Dane informed me in her deep accented English, "You ah not making a very goot image of America." The nerd related a bland impression that kept the flat, know-it-all tone he always had. "I thought all the food came from the store," said the privileged, ignorant, American.
I didn't bother defending myself. This was the kind of situation I have grown callous to while abroad. People who think Americans are dumb or blunt or loud will find it in every American. Where from a fellow Danes a remark would be considered sarcastic or, at worst, misguided, from an American it is the manifestation of a broken culture.
I cannot blame people for their assumptions about my country from me or vise-versa. I did the same thing from the beginning of my stay. I had a Danish roommate. He was an ass hole who played a lot of video games, so my image of his country mixed indelibly with my image of him. This pattern continued with everyone I met who wasn't born in the US. The Spanish girl becomes the Spanish people. The Italian I sat next to in class is the sheepish representative sample of a country.
If you don't think in these terms though, the whole idea of having the multi-cultural study abroad experience is complicated. When you can't judge a culture from a few of its members, then at what point, if ever, can you say anything about the culture? What I've slowly been learning is that you never learn enough, unless you're actually staying in the country of interest. Five Italians does not make a country, not even a good random sampling, especially if they're all students.
